


Sense Memory

by domesticadventures



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Demon Dean Winchester, Episode: s10e02 Reichenbach, Gen, Headspace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-18
Updated: 2014-10-18
Packaged: 2018-02-21 14:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2471540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domesticadventures/pseuds/domesticadventures
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They say some senses are more strongly tied to memory than others. Smell, for instance, is more powerful than sound or touch or taste, is the vehicle by which people most frequently travel back in time, if only for an instant.</p>
<p>Dean was four when Mary died, and he remembers the smell of her burning flesh better than he remembers the sound of her voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sense Memory

They say some senses are more strongly tied to memory than others. Smell, for instance, is more powerful than sound or touch or taste, is the vehicle by which people most frequently travel back in time, if only for an instant.

Dean was four when Mary died, and he remembers the smell of her burning flesh better than he remembers the sound of her voice.

He hears her later, of course: in spirit, in heaven, in twists of fate that throw him back to a time before his mom was a Winchester, before the pain that has always defined their family worked its way into her life. Her voice enters his thoughts so easily and refuses to linger there. “Angels are watching over you.” “I want a family. I wanna be safe.” The words are so clearly Mary’s, but when he calls them up, searches his memory for some scrap of his mother, that’s all they are -- words. Perhaps it’s a failing of his own, that he seems unable to retain anything marking them _hers_.

Fire, though. Fire is a constant in a life of hunting, a ward against darkness and danger, and the few times he sees his mom are nothing compared to all the years spent setting things aflame.

Even twenty years later, Dean tries to throw enough salt and lighter fluid into every open grave that when he drops the match, the smell doesn’t remind him of his mother.

\--

Dean crashes and burns, goes out in not quite the blaze of glory he had always imagined.

He wakes hours later with a hole in his chest. _Don’t bleed_ , he tells himself, and to his surprise, the wound closes at his command.

He sits in a bar weeks later and plays the first notes of “Hey Jude” on the piano, stabs them out from memory.

_Don’t hurt_ , he tells himself, and for the first time in his life, it works.

\--

“You’re my brother, and I’m here to take you home,” Sam says, and Dean tries not to laugh as he throws Sam’s words back at him, mocking.

“What is this, a Lifetime movie?” he asks. _Home_ means something in those, he’s pretty sure; something warm and solid, a familiar smell, a steady flame. For him, though, the word conjures something else, dull flashes of memory devoid of light or life: weapons on the walls, pictures on the nightstand, relics of a past life. Locked doors, empty rooms. A prison. He’ll pass, thanks.

Smoke fills the room, scorching Sam’s lungs. Dean breathes it in, tells himself _home_ is nothing more than a word as he imagines the bunker burning to the ground.

He doesn’t feel a thing.

 

 


End file.
